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MacOS X Has Been Around LONGER then the System 1.0 – 9.0

Get ready for your minds to be blown. MacOS X (now just macOS) has been around longer then Apples Classic OSes (System 1.0 – 9.0)

The classic Mac OS was introduced on January 24, 1984. It was replaced by MacOS X September 13, 2000 with the public beta. Meaning, this year MacOS X has been on the market longer then any other Apple operating system. Crazy right?

Before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company had spent several years fruitlessly trying to develop a modern version of the Macintosh operating system. Since its debut in 1984, the old Mac OS had turned into a bloated, unstable patchwork of code. It had become a nightmare to maintain and upgrade. For users, it meant constant crashes, freezes, and restarts—and lots of lost data, frustration, and rage.

Because large portions of the Mac OS were still based on creaky old code, Apple decided that it had to start from scratch.
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In 1994, programmers began a ground-up rewrite of the operating system, code-named Copland, after the famous American composer. But after a couple of years of effort, it became apparent the project was a gargantuan effort and would never be finished. The Apple executive team at the time decided it would be easier (and wiser) to purchase a next-generation operating system from another company rather than develop one itself. The search eventually led to the purchase of Steve Jobs’s NeXT.